№ 417. The Giving Tree

№ 292. Straying From the Yellow Brick Road

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Yellow

№ 213. The Piano

I am laying down the piano.
Its voices are cords knotted on my thin frame.

№ 173. Idiom and Some Such

You are my idiom:
Socks spooning
My orphaned toes.

You are my color:
Reds lining
My saffron dawns.

You are my nuance:
Bristles nipping
My sore nape.

№ 163. Consolation of Grief 2

He carries a headful
Of salt and pepper.
Proof of a seasoned mind.

№ 160. The Consolation of Grief

Grief is a curious beast.

He's barbed, so you know he can sting.

Also, he's quite reserved and shy.

He comes for visits.

But you have to invite him in.

You have to insist he stays a bit.

Of course, he declines, at first.

He's a little embarrassed by the invitation, 

As is his nature. But he accepts, anyway.

He thinks it's just impolite to ignore a second offer.

So you finally see him seated in your living room.

Quiet. A little out of place on your sofa. But there.

You offer him a brew of black bitterness.

He loves the aroma. It scalds the sinuses

Like the sniffles from a December smog.

№ 135. Day 2 of Monsoons: A fine sushi lunch

№ 134. Manah manahm

What you say to the monsoon dumping all its waters into the city drowning in unsunny weather forecasts, to the movies in perpetual white-noise loops, to the persistent threats of floods and all the wrenches thrown in:

№ 131. Instagram (1)

We receive; we wait.
It suns. It rains. It passes.
We receive. We wait.

------------------------------------------

The story began with his postpaid unlimited data plan.

It was late summer last year, just before the monsoons came with their tantrums. May, to be precise.

№ 120. Forced Dialogues / Conceded Diatribes

Chantblog

    Of the dark past
    A child is born;
    With joy and grief
    My heart is torn.

Evolution is a series of successful mistakes: errors made when copying genes, which – by allowing their carriers to run faster or to live on less food – mean they do better.

    Calm in his cradle
    The living lies.
    May love and mercy
    Unclose his eyes!

Natural selection, as Darwin called this idea, comes from inherited differences in survival. It worked on us in the past – with some people better at dealing with diseases like malaria, or poisons such as alcohol – and, in time, it leads to new species (ourselves included).

    Young life is breathed
    On the glass;
    The world that was not
    Comes to pass.

The important word is differences; and they have disappeared. Now, almost every baby born in richer countries survives until they are grown up, but that is new; even in Shakespeare's time, only one in three did – and many who died young did so because their genes could not resist disease, cold, starvation.

     A child is sleeping:
     An old man gone.
     O, father forsaken,
     Forgive your son!*

Now we almost all pass the Darwin exam, we will not become a new species. But although our bodies will not change, with luck our minds – unkind, greedy and angry as they too often are – will.**


Bento Box:

*   Ecce Puer by James Joyce (Poem Hunter)
** From "Ask a grown-up: will humans evolve into a new species? Professor of genetics Steve Jones answers seven-year-old Brendan's question" (Guardian)

№ 115. Friday Find: How Will You Measure Your Life?

"My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction."(HBR - Clayton M. Christensen)

№ 109. The Shell and the Book

 "A child and a man were one day walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear. Suddenly he heard sounds,--strange, low, melodious sounds, as if the shell were remembering and repeating to itself the murmurs of its ocean home.

№ 108. Fresh Guacamole, Batman!

Lean, crisp and fun. That's how we like our servings of diversions.

Lean narrative. Crisp sound. Fun visual.

Unique pairings of objects with the underlying reality they represent---you know, grenade for avocados, baseball for onion, pin cushion for tomato, dice for diced tomato, electric bulbs for peppers, etc. I could almost "see" in my head an actual onion being peeled as the film showed a baseball being shed its thin skin.

Metaphors? In animation?

Yummy.

№ 94. A Day in Haiku and Four Decades of Life

A girl, alphabets
On her hair, loads bullet thoughts.
Her first line of fire:

Fugitive motions.
But first, a lucid repast
Of flambéed delicts.

An apt harvest from
A vale of verified mirth.
Next array, the cub.

The tiger’s outlier,
Defying academic
Gravity with wit.

At last, a thriller,
Pages from either leisure
Or legal skirmish.

Sweet life at four-one
A quid pro quo of prudence
Levity and wine.

from Adventurer by Fate

№ 75. Marking Time

Andy Goldsworthy is an "innovative British artist whose collaborations with nature produce uniquely personal and intense artworks. Using a seemingly endless range of natural materials—snow, ice, leaves, bark, rock, clay, stones, feathers petals, twigs—he creates outdoor sculpture that manifests, however fleeting, a sympathetic contact with the natural world. Before they disappear, or as they disappear, Goldsworthy, records his work in suburb color photographs.

Goldsworthy deliberately explores the tension of working in the area where he finds his materials, and is undeterred by changes by changes in the weather which may melt a spectacular ice arch or wash away a delicate structure of grasses. The intention is not to “make his mark” on the landscape, but rather to work with it instinctively, so that a delicate scene of bamboo or massive snow rings or a circle of leaves floating in a pool create a new perception and an ever growing understanding of the land." (from Goldsworthy/biography)





He says about his works:

"Movement, change, light growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue....

My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays—integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit." (quoted from Brain Pickings)

№ 51. Star Wars

Back in the early 21st century, Spider-Man 1 was shown in tandem with the much-maligned Star Wars Prequels (I, II, III). My friends were surprised why I preferred the Lucas films over the arachnid marvel. Spidey was, by many accounts, better told and more engaging. The prequels were a disappointment, read: Jar Jar Binks.

Jar Jar

First, I'm a sucker for sweeping narrative strokes and the macro-enterprise. Let me count the ways. The allusions to the aging and frayed Roman Empire on the brink of collapse, the Senate horsetrading and grandstanding, the clash of ideals and ideology, the memory of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (1980s!), hyperdrive and light saber proved too strong a pull towards the dark side.

№ 30. Animated Saturday

They're art born from relatively new and still evolving media. But the processes, I can imagine, require almost the same mindful creativity, vortex of resources, obsessive reach for perfection and marrow-seeping tedium as the genius behind Sistine Chapel.



Sometimes, just seeing the result, without the necessary but painful process, makes us forget of what it takes to create a gem. Is pain a necessary assumption for genius? Will art be denied its fruition without the fuel of misery? Is it really true that the boost of agony or the burn of acid at the seams of the tortured soul may propel the next breach in the limits of quantum physics? Should creators and their kind be unhappy? Otherwise, no art. Nada.

Well, assuming they already have the gift of genius, why else should they have access to a torrid sex life, right? Or at least a gum-pink healthy love life? What more do they need?

№ 29. My Life in REM Sleep

Today is May 4, 2010, Tuesday. We're in the middle of Manila's concrete bake off. It’s only 11:10 AM and I’m already melting from the heat. 

I’m writing this confession on a black Mac, which has the color of my id.

---

Like the rings of a redwood, sweat is etched in my indexes. They yield tales of the fat years as well as the lean ones. 

I have recently been self-employed---unplugged from the matrix of production.  Technically though, I am just a capitalist in hibernation.

I also just switched from Windows to Mac last year. 


Yes, I’m aware that Mac is a Q Continuum compared to that unenlightened majority of the technological divide. Those protozoans and their clones. Still, my Mac hums on XP. Defilement, you say. Well, my system can’t be purged of all eighteen years of assimilation. Redmond is still fused with my flesh.

---

№ 28. Manila Extract (after Ondoy)

Design Anthology

You are dense.
An equation of salty noodles 
steaming in my cup.


You are stained.
A peppered whisper
left by the ketchup on my lips.


You are Manila.
A name seasoned by monsoons
stirring needles in my gut.

№ 22. Minding the Gaps

I won't fall because
My steps will mind the pavement,
By peeling off illusions.



Bento Box: "Minding the Gaps" is from the reminder to London commuters, "Please mind the gaps...". When I first heard it spoken in a very English accent, in the tube, in Islington station, I thought COOL. Way cooler than the 7*C spring weather, then. I shall return.